The road to Utopia is the road to Hell. — Communism and socialism are the opiates of the intelligentsia. — The left, in its eternal and futile quest for "equality", is more than willing to abolish liberty and sunder fraternity.

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Is There a Republican President in Our Future?

Ann Coulter doesn’t speak for me, though I often agree with her. She recently said this:

If either [Texas or Florida] ever flip, no Republican ever gets elected president again. Three out of four Hispanics in Texas are under the age of 18. So, each day Trump doesn’t fulfill the immigration promises — his voters are dying off and Democratic voters, Hillary’s voters are registering to vote. So, I hope he keeps his promise. This is why we wanted a wall.

There are also cultural and economic reasons to want a wall. But the electoral reason is good enough for me.

The flipping problem isn’t confined to States that are becoming more Hispanic, such as Arizona, Colorado, and Texas. There is the the southward creep of the Northeastern influence into North Carolina and Georgia (it has already vanquished Virginia). And there is the tenuous hold on States that flipped to the GOP column in 2016: Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

All in all, and despite my bold prediction about 2020 (tempered here), the GOP has much to fear. Consider the presidential elections of 2000 and 2016, both won by GOP candidates with less than half of the two-party popular vote. Bush garnered 270 electoral votes with 49.7 percent of the two-party vote; Trump took 304 electoral votes with 48.9 percent of the two-party vote. Trump’s greater margin of victory is due to his (mostly narrow) victories in States lost by Bush (Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) more than offsetting the loss of States won by Bush (Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Virginia).

It’s entirely possible that the squishy center of the electorate will come to its senses and reject the party (Democrat, that is) which has aligned itself with identity politics, sexual deviancy, oppression, lawlessness, violence, and anti-Americanism. But I am not sanguine, given the dominance of that party’s minions in public education, the academy, and the “news” and “entertainment” media for so many decades.

I therefore offer this cautionary analysis of electoral trends. In the table below, electoral votes (EVs) are distributed according to Trump’s share of each-State’s two-party popular vote, and whether that was greater (+) or smaller (-) than Bush’s share in 2000. (Note: for simplicity, I have included in Trump’s total of 305, 2 EVs that Trump would have won from Texas, but for unfaithful electors. I have also ignored 1 EV awarded to Trump under Maine law, which awards an EV to the winner in each congressional district and 2 EVs to the statewide winner. I have included in Clinton’s total 6 EVs that eluded her because of faithles electors in Hawaii and Washington.)

I arbitrarily (but reasonably) sorted the 16 share/trend columns into 6 “solidity groups”, indicated by the color-coded values near the bottom of the table. Shades of red, from dark to light, indicate the degree of likelihood that the States in those groups will stay in the GOP camp. Shades of blue from light to dark, indicate the degree of likelihood that States in those groups will stay in the Democrat camp.

The two groups in the center — lightest red and lightest blue — comprise the at-risk EVs for the two parties. Unsurprisingly, there are far more at-risk GOP EVs than there are at-risk Democrat EVs: 155 to 24.

This isn’t to say that Republicans won’t win any more presidential elections. But barring a surge of (deserved) disenchantment with Democrats, the day may come when the GOP routinely selects a sacrificial lamb for slaughter every fourth November.

Comments & Correspondence

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If you submit a comment or suggestion by e-mail, I may acknowledge it or use it on this blog. But I may paraphrase what you say or edit it for the sake of concision, clarity, coherence, or brevity. I will not use your name unless you specifically authorize me to do so. Even then, I will put quotation marks around your name unless I am certain of your identity.

On Liberty and Libertarianism

What is liberty? It is peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.

John Stuart Mill opined that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." But who determines whether an act is harmful or harmless? Acts deemed harmless by an individual are not harmless if they subvert the societal bonds of trust and self-restraint upon which liberty itself depends.

Which is not to say that all social regimes are regimes of liberty. Liberty requires voice -- the freedom to dissent -- and exit -- the freedom to choose one's neighbors and associates. Voice and exit depend, in turn, on the rule of law under a minimal state.

Liberty, because it is a social phenomenon and not an innate condition of humanity, must be won and preserved by an unflinching defense of a polity that fosters liberty through its norms, and the swift and certain administration of justice within that polity. The governments in and of the United States have long since ceased to foster liberty, but most Americans are captives in their own land and have no choice but to strive for the restoration of liberty, or something closer to it.

Who can restore liberty? Certainly not the self-proclaimed libertarians who are fixated on Mill's empty harm principle and align with the left on social norms. Traditional (i.e., Burkean) conservatism fosters the preservation and adherence of beneficial norms (e.g., the last six of the Ten Commandments). Thus, by necessity, the only true libertarianism is found in traditional conservatism. I am a traditional conservative, which makes me a libertarian -- a true one.

Notes about Usage

“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.

Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).

The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.

I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.

I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.

If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:

What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.

This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.